Photo of my setup below. JD3520 with Frontier 60" mid-PTO driven blower on a front hitch, and Frontier 72" rear blade on the back.
The last couple of years have thrown a lot of ice, freezing rain and slush at us, and of course the blower can't deal with any of that. So for this year the 800lb weight box came off and the 400lb blade went on, along with 200lb of wheel weights.
Today was the first opportunity to use the blade. I had a about 1.5" of heavy, wet slush to move off my 1000ft paved driveway. In general the blade and machine combination performed well, I just need to refine my driving to keep it closer to the driveway edge. However, I did run into one unexpected issue, which was blade chatter on drier parts of the driveway. My initial reaction was to slow down, but that was very inefficient. Eventually I found that if I took just a little weight off of the hitch, not enough to pick up the blade, just enough to pick up some slack, rather than just pushing the hitch lever fully forward (full down), that cured the problem. But that seemed to be a very fussy way to solve this issue.
Is there anything else I can do to minimize the chatter problem? I guess I could put a UHMW edge on it but that's another $300-ish down the drain . Maybe put some washers/spacers behind the blade on the top mounting bolts to tilt the blade a little further forward?
What say you all?
The last couple of years have thrown a lot of ice, freezing rain and slush at us, and of course the blower can't deal with any of that. So for this year the 800lb weight box came off and the 400lb blade went on, along with 200lb of wheel weights.
Today was the first opportunity to use the blade. I had a about 1.5" of heavy, wet slush to move off my 1000ft paved driveway. In general the blade and machine combination performed well, I just need to refine my driving to keep it closer to the driveway edge. However, I did run into one unexpected issue, which was blade chatter on drier parts of the driveway. My initial reaction was to slow down, but that was very inefficient. Eventually I found that if I took just a little weight off of the hitch, not enough to pick up the blade, just enough to pick up some slack, rather than just pushing the hitch lever fully forward (full down), that cured the problem. But that seemed to be a very fussy way to solve this issue.
Is there anything else I can do to minimize the chatter problem? I guess I could put a UHMW edge on it but that's another $300-ish down the drain . Maybe put some washers/spacers behind the blade on the top mounting bolts to tilt the blade a little further forward?
What say you all?